Dorian Gray Book Study Alexander Wiki
Victorian Literature The Victorian era, named for the reign of Queen Victoria, lasted from about 1830 to 1901. The period was a time of exploration, not only of the globe but also of the potential of man. This era saw world-changing advances in technology, philosophy, society, industrialism, art and literature. In addition to shaping the societal framework of family and relationships, the victorian era gave the western world its first free public libraries and saw the rise of women in the position of teachers, nurses and librarians. It also turned out some of the western cannon’s most enduring literature, including Alice in Wonderland, Great Expectations, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Raven and many more classics that appear in every school curriculum in America today. British imperialism at its peak had stretched its fingers to every corner of the globe, influencing authors from America to France to India and beyond. While the literature at the beginning of the period emphasized exploration and potential, producing classics such as Treasure Island and Around the World in Eighty Days, the tone of excitement waned at the end of the century and gave way to a feeling of decay. The 1890s, in particular, grieved to see the aging of its monarch and her heir. What had been fresh and strong ten years earlier now seemed to be rotting away. “Artists of the nineties, representing the aesthetic movement, were very much aware of living at the end of a great century...a studied langour, a weary sophistication, a search for new ways of titillating jaded palates can be found in both the poetry and the prose of the period” (Christ et al, 2000, p. 1054). As an author who went from dizzying heights of popularity in the beginning of the decade to almost literal exile at the end of the decade, Oscar Wilde and his book The Picture of Dorian Gray are perfect embodiments of this decade. Richard Ellmann notes that “Among the writers identified with the 1890s, Wilde is the only one whom everyone still reads. The various labels that have been applied to the age --Aestheticicsm, Decadence, the Beardsley period -- ought not to conceal the fact that our first association with it is Wilde, refulgent, majestic and ready to fall” (Ellmann, 1988, p. 1) As Wilde’s grandson Merlin Holland writes in The Wilde Album, “the publication of The Picture of Dorian Gray was to become the practical application of sentimentality’ and overnight drew up the battle lines between Wilde and the world of Victorian Literature” (Holland 1997, p. 129) Rationale I chose to study The Picture of Dorian Gray because I have always counted Oscar Wilde among my favorite authors. Dorian Gray is not my favorite Wilde work, as I believe that it misses opportunities for the sparkling subtle wit seen in plays like The Importance of Being Earnest. However, as it was Wilde’s only realized novel I felt that there was an opportunity not to be passed up when choosing a book for the project. Prior to research I was aware that Wilde had suffered his the demise of his reputation after the Queensberry trial, but the research for this project showed me just how low his career had sunk in the last few years of his life. What I expected to learn from this project took some unexpected twists and turns as research turned from themes of fin-de-siecle literature to the study of popular print works in transition from novel to magazine serial and back to novel. I certainly did not expect that my research would take me into an examination of the world of late nineteenth century pornography publishing. Few professors tell their students that Wilde turned to publishers of “dirty” books in desperation for money, a move that would have been seen in his eyes as the ultimate degradation: admitting that his work, which he believed to be the ultimate expression of beauty and truth, was condemned by his once-adoring public as obscene filth. Comparing Two Copies of the 1907 Edition Research and observation of the book and comparisons to other copies and editions also proved to be a learning experience about the process of early 20th century bookbinding and library restoration techniques. I was fortunate to find a physical copy of Dorian Gray with its own historical past that spoke to me as a San Jose State student and as a lover of books. Searching SJSU’s catalog for the oldest copy available of Dorian Gray brought up a set of collected works from 1907, with a set of copies in general circulation and a set of copies non circulating in Special Collections and Archives. Ostensibly, the two sets had been donated to San Jose State by the same person. On observing the two books, however, it becomes apparent that the editions have been treated slightly differently by various departments in the library. The circulating copy has had its dust jacket removed and only remnants of the original leather cover remain, exposing the original green printed bookboard cover. The spine has been covered with treated black buckram tape. A patch from the original leather cover on the spine has been glued over the buckram. In contrast, it appears that the non circulating copy has been entirely recovered with acrylic-treated linen and has had the inside bookboard covered in beige paper. While the book has no remainder of the leather cover visible, it appears to have a scrap of the spine of the original dust jacket preserved, glued and taped to the spine in the manner of the circulating copy. The interiors of both books were identical, with a small exception on the non circulating copy’s frontispiece. The photograph of the author had leached acid onto the tissue flyleaf while compressed together for a century, leaving a faint echo of the photograph on the opposite page. Going by dates stamped on the library checkout card pockets, the last time the non circulating copy was checked out was 1996. The circulating copy appears to have last been checked out in 1961. The current San Jose State University Library was completed in 2003, which consolidated all of the books from offsite storage and the existing Wahlquist library. Given that the circulating copy did not have a barcode on it, indicating that it had not been checked out since the move to the new library, I believe that it has not been disturbed from its place on the shelf for nearly ten years. Why the non circulating copy had been checked out comparatively recently and moved from circulation into the archives remains a mystery. Publishing in the 1890s Published novels in the late 19th century were normally split into a three-volume collection, known as a three decker or triple decker. This was a way for printers to make more money from selling individual books rather than as one collected work. It was also very common to publish a novel in serial installments within a magazine, which started a media transition that took the reading of novels from the upper-middle class to the middle-lower class: “Serials were an important factor in forcing the reduction of the price of books during the period, in ending the expensive three-decker system in the 1890s, and with it the circulating libraries’ monopoly of the book market for the middle class reader” (Brake 2001, p. 4) Writers weighed the pros and cons between book and serial: publishing works in cheap magazine serial form made less money, but created exposure to a wide reading public. Publishing works in novel forms made more money, but limited the audience to those who could afford to spend more on collected volumes. For many authors, the former was enough of an incentive to first publish in serials, then polish and revise the work to justify selling the novel. In comparing how serials and books divided the social classes of readers, Brake suggests that “the differences in the nature of authorship in nineteenth century serials and books -- the collectivism of the serial as a cultural form and the individualism of the book -- are significant in the relative status of the two spheres of our own period; the privileging of books and the marginalisation of serials by our author-oriented system of cultural value” (Brake 2001, p. 19). What matters to our cultural values is not the text itself, but how that text is presented. Although the text of Dorian Gray in this study is examined in final published book form, it is important to remember that the original story was first published as a much shorter one-shot incarnation in a monthly magazine. As the popularity of literary magazines among the average reading public has dwindled immensely in the last 100 years, it is easy to dismiss the significance of the magazine edition (ephemeral periodical) and instead concentrate solely on the significance of the text in the printed book (permanent copy). Elizabeth Lorang (2010, p. 33) writes that “to see magazines and the periodical-text as only a haphazard throwing together of materials in attempt to garner a large readership denies the degree to which they participate and shape cultural thought.” The works of Conan Doyle, Dickens and countless other authors of the time were all published serially before evolving their works into collected novels. For some authors such as Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes, the serial format worked with the episodic form of the short story. For Dickens, releasing a novel in a series of chapters allowed him to write according to how his readers reacted to events in the story. Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Biographical Sketch Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in 1854 to a wealthy surgeon and his activist wife. Although he was born Irish of Irish parentage, he sought from an early age to integrate himself into the height of fashionable London society. He was a brilliant student at Trinity College and Oxford, where he became familiar with the works of Walter Pater. Pater is thought to be the main force behind the Aesthetic movement that shaped art, poetry and prose of the mid-late Victorian era, with his emphasis on beauty and sensuality. While dabbling in journalism and magazine editing to make ends meet, Wilde first found success with the poem Ravenna in 1878. His first successful play The Duchess of Padua in 1883 and subsequent plays, poems and short stories brought him fame and recognition. He was a successful public speaker and lecturer, traveling overseas and across America to read essays written in his razor-sharp wit. Although he seemed to spend money faster than he could make it, and drained his wife of her modest fortune soon after marrying her, Wilde’s public image projected an extravagant lifestyle of expensive clothes, trips abroad and fine material goods; he caused a public stir (and created a cultural catchphrase) by remarking that he “found it harder and harder everyday to live up to his blue china” (Ellman 1988, p. 45). He often went on trips to Paris with an entourage of similar-minded friends to experience the decadent lifestyle and culture of the bohemian underworld -- “Wilde had been going there regularly since the mid-1880s for the experience of a completely different culture, but he committed the unpardonable offence of bringing it home in his suitcase and putting it into print” (Holland, 1997, p. 138). Wilde’s double life was catching up to him faster than he could hide it, which inspired him to write about the struggle of juggling a public persona and a personal identity -- the theme of Dorian Gray. Writing Dorian Gray “The publication of Dorian Gray, although it had taken place only in a magazine, brought Wilde all the attention he could desire” (Ellmann, 1988, p. 320) was originally a short novel in the July 1890 edition of Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine. Book reviewers eager to find a parallel between the story’s homoerotic overtones and Wilde’s wildly-spiraling out of control public image universally condemned the novel as soon as it was published. The St. James Gazette pronounced it “mawkish and nauseous, with effeminate characters who fill up the intervals of talk by plucking daisies and playing with them” (Gagnier, 1986, p. 58) and the Scots Observer wrote that “if Wilde can write for none but outlawed noblemen and perverted telegraph boys, the sooner he takes to tailoring (or some other decent trade) the better for his own reputation and the public morals” (Holland 1997, p. 135). This was a warning from Wilde’s reading public that his reputation and career was under threat if he did not tone down the homosexual themes of the novel. After expanding some chapters and doing some minor edits with the language and interactions between characters, Wilde released Dorian Gray as a complete novel in 1890, then with more edits in 1891. The edits did little to appease its audience, and fueled Wilde’s notoriety in the dark days to come. The Role of Dorian Gray in the Queensberry Trial The exact time when Wilde realized that a heteronormative monogamous marriage no longer suited him is murky, but it is thought to be around 1890 that Wilde met and fell deeply in love with Alfred “Bosie” Douglas, the third son of the Marquess of Queensberry. Queensberry, having already lost one son to suicide over suspicions of homosexuality (Holland 1997, p. 151) publicly harassed Wilde and threatened to publicly out him as a sodomite, which was at the time punishable by prison term under the charge of “Gross Indecency”. Bosie convinced Wilde to take Queensberry to court for slander, which backfired on him in the worst possible way. Unable to prove his case against a jury that was heavily in Queensberry’s pocket, Wilde lost the libel trial and had to defend himself against charges of Gross Indecency. Passages from Dorian Gray were used as evidence against him as evidence of his own lifestyle, although Holland points out that “it was not on Dorian Gray that they got him; by giving Oscar Wilde a day to defend himself and his art he was caught superbly off his guard” (Holland 1997, p. 166). Wilde was sentenced in 1895 to two years of hard labor in Reading Gaol. He did not succumb physically to the hardships of prison, but emerged two years later as a broken-spirited exile of society. Wilde fled to Paris, where he spent the last few years of his life before dying of meningitis. Oscar Wilde and the "Salacious Book Trade" As Wilde’s wife said, “Since Oscar wrote Dorian Gray, no one will speak to us” (Holland 1997, p.137, Ellmann 1988, p. 320) Upon Wilde’s release, he could find no publisher willing to print even his most successful works. He had previously made the acquaintance of publisher Leonard Smithers, “an expert exploiter of the rhetoric of connoisseurship, bibliophilia, and elite 'select' editions that coincided with and concealed a clandestine trade in pornography” (Mackie 2004, p. 980) In addition to explicit works, Smithers published works from the similarly disgraced artist Aubrey Beardsley. “Both Beardsley and Wilde attained celebrity in the early Nineties, yet at the most crucial juncture of their lives both found themselves in the unenviable position of having been cast down from the pinnacle of eminence without friends, without money, and without a patron” (Nelson, 2000, p. 173). His final work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, was sold as a surprise success by Smithers. The poem was first released with the author credited to “C.3.3.”, Wilde’s prison identification number, and would not be printed with Wilde’s name until the final edition in 1899 (Nelson, 2000, p. 208) The market to pirate his literature was suddenly wide open, as no respectable publishing house would associate with him. Wilde’s downfall had attracted new kinds of audiences, primarily those who wanted to read controversial material for the thrill of it and a new generation of closeted homosexual young men. After Smithers, Wilde’s works fell into the hands of Charles Carrington, who was the most prominent publisher of English and French obscenity in the late nineteenth century (Sigel, 2005, p. 83) Carrington was known as“the bane of Scotland Yard” until 1907, when he was deported from France back to England, and printed nearly all of Wilde’s works between his death in 1900 to the authorized Methuen Publishing Ltd. release of his works in 1908 (Sigel, 2005, p.83, Mackie, 2004, p. 985) Publishing "Societies" and possible piracy? The fallout from the collapse of his reputation had also apparently clouded the issue of copyright (Mackie, 2004, p. 981), which led to few persecutions if the pirated material was intercepted. In America, pornography and banned books were often distributed volume by volume in collected editions under the guise of an elite subscription-based club, often known as a publishing“society” (Mackie, 2004, p. 981). The 1907 edition featured in this study has been printed by The Nottingham Society, lending a possible credibility to the theory that it is a pirated book. Aside from the location information on the title page that identified the publishers as American, I could find virtually no information on the Nottingham Society, other than that they also published the collected works of Rudyard Kipling. Kipling was also highly controversial figure at the turn of the century, as he had published works interpreted as anti-American. Title Page The title page has a very simple layout of collected title, title, printer’s logo and publisher’s name. The logo is stamped in red, as is the title of the collection, while the rest of the text is black. The font appears to be what would now be recognized as Old English Text MT to modern word processors, although Microsoft claims that what the average person recognizes vaguely as “old English” font is based off of a typeface from 1904 called Cloister Black (Microsoft, 2012). This font is a revival of medieval textura blackletter script, first used in manuscripts during the Carolingian era. The printer’s logo is a small square stamped illustration of a flowering vine. It is perfectly symmetrical on all sides, appearing to be a mirror image of itself. This logo does not match the emblem on the spine of the book, which depicts a stylized flower surrounded by a framed outline that bears resemblance in shape to an open book. Frontispiece The first printed page past the front endpaper is a photo of Oscar Wilde. This is a commonly reproduced portrait from 1882, depicting him in the long fur coat that made him an instant icon of the fashionable dandy. As mentioned earlier, in the archived copy the acid from the photo has etched an imprint into the thin tissue paper flyleaf, which is unintentionally captioned below with “Oscar Wilde” in red Cloister script. Missing Preface The preface is one of the most famous parts of the story, functioning as a meditation on aesthetic beauty and creation. It is not essential to the story and is occasionally published on its own, such as in the Norton Anthology of English Literature. The opening lines are instantly recognizable, as they have been reproduced many times in popular culture: “the artist is the creator of beautiful things…those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming.” The preface is missing from the 1907 edition, but has been restored to the 1932 edition. This is possibly another sign of bad printing practices, or it could have been omitted fo r other reasons. Binding Format The pages are folded into signatures of eight pages, with each bundle of pages gathered together in a complete book and then sewn through the binding and glued to the spine. This technique is called Smyth sewn binding, and was invented in 1868 by David McConnell Smyth (Powis 2011). The end result of this technique is a very durable book that lays flat when opened. When viewed as a complete book from the top, one can see that the pages are edged in gold gilt. This gilt is not repeated for the sides or the bottom of the pages. At first it was proposed that the rest of the pages were uniformly gilded, but from a comparison of the two copies it is now more likely that only the top of the book was intended to be embellished. Pagination and Page Layout The book does not contain a table of contents, although the book is broken up into multiple short chapters. It is a volume from a set of collected works, with Dorian Gray comprising the entire text of the book, so no table of contents is needed to separate individual works. The heading at the top of each page contains the book’s full title, rather than an individual chapter title heading. The page number is to the far right/left bottom, close to the text and about an indent-space from the edge. The font of the text appears to be Bookman Old Style, which was created in Scotland in 1858 (Microsoft, 2012). The text is quite heavy and dark, possibly due to the absorption of the paper that it is printed on. The pages are thick and tattered on the edges from a century of being read, and both books have been annotated with penciled notes from students of decades past. Summary Is this 1907 copy a pirated book? There is no clear answer. The setting of pages is slightly off, particularly in the frontispiece, but the binding is strong and has lasted for over a century of being read. The preface is missing, as is any information about the publishers beyond the name of the company. The copyright date places the book into a period where Wilde was still an unpopular subject, but his “death had made him safely historical” (Kaplan and Stowell 2009, p. 319) and therefore his notoriety was cooling down and making way for the revival of his literary legend in the Edwardian era to come. As Wilde’s posthumous legacy continues to grow and make him into one of literature’s most outrageous and enduring personalities, existing copies of these early flawed editions will become increasingly rare. Perhaps it is for the best that the cycle has turned to the point where the reading public clamors for Wilde’s original unchanged edition. References Brake, L. (2001). Print in Transition, 1850-1910: Studies in Media and Book History Ellmann, R. (1988). Oscar Wilde. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf. Gagnier, R. (1986). Idylls of the marketplace: Oscar Wilde and the Victorian Public. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. Holland, M. (1997). The Wilde Album. New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company. Kaplan, J., & Stowell, S. (1999). The Dandy and the Dowager: Oscar Wilde and Audience Resistance. New Theatre Quarterly, 15 (4), 318-331 Lorang, E. (2010). The Picture of Dorian Gray in Context: Intertextuality and Lippincott's Monthly Magazine. Victorian Periodicals Review, 43 (1), 19-32. Microsoft. (2012)."Old English Text MT". Retrieved from: http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fonts/family.aspx?FID=127 Mackie, G. (2004). Publishing Notoriety: Piracy, Pornography and Oscar Wilde. University of Toronto Quarterly, 73 (4), 980-990. Nelson, J. G. (2000). Publisher to the Decadents: Leonard Smithers in the Careers of Beardsley, Wilde, and Dowson. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press. Powis Parker Inc. (2011). "The History of Bookbinding". Retrieved from:http://www.powis.com/resources/learn/binding_history.php. Sigel, L.Z. (2005). International Exposure: Perspectives on Modern European Pornography, 1800-2000. New Brunwick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.